Youth and Egolatry by Pio Baroja

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When we left the cafe, Regoyos inquired:

"Could they have been joking?"

"No; nonsense. They do not believe that such things are worth knowing.
They think they are petty details which might be useful to railway
porters. Trigo imagines that he is a magician, who understands the
female mind."

"Well, does he?" asked Regoyos, with naive innocence.

"How can he understand anything? The poor fellow is ignorant. His other
attainments are on a par with his geography."

The ignorance of authors and journalists is accompanied as a matter of
course by a total want of comprehension. A number of years ago, a rich
young man called at my house, intending to found a review. During the
conversation, he explained that he was a Murcian, a lawyer and a
follower of Maura.

Finally, after expounding his literary ideas, he informed me that
Ricardo Leon, who at that time had just published his first novel,
would, in his opinion, come to be acknowledged as the first novelist of
Europe. He also assured me that Dickens's humour was absolutely vulgar,
cheap and out of date.

"I am not surprised that you should think so," I said to him. "You are
from Murcia, you are a lawyer and a Maurista; naturally, you like
Ricardo Leon, and it is equally natural that you should not like
Dickens."

Persons who imagine that it is of no consequence whether Milan is a
seaport or not, who believe that Nietzsche is a drivelling ass, and who
make bold to tell us that Dickens is a cheap author--in one word, young
gentlemen lawyers who are partisans of Maura, are the people who provide
copy for our press. How can the Spanish press be expected to be
different from what it is?

AMERICANS

Unquestionably, Spaniards suffer much from the uncertainty of
information and narrowness of view inevitable to those who live apart
from the main currents of life.

In comparison with the English, the Germans, or the French, whether we
like it or not, we appear provincial. We are provincials who possess
more or less talent, but nevertheless we are provincials.

So it is that an Italian, a Russian, or a Swede prefers to read a book
by a mediocre Parisian, such as Marcel Prevost, to one by a writer of
genuine talent, such as Galdos; it also explains why the canvases of
second rate painters such as David, Gericault, or Ingres are more highly
esteemed in the market than those of a painter of genius like Goya.

To be provincial has its virtues as well as its defects. At times the
provincial are accompanied by universal elements, which blend and form a
masterpiece. This was the case with _Don Quixote_, with the
etchings of Goya and the dramas of Ibsen. Similarly, among new peoples,
provincial stupidity will often form a blend with an obtuseness which is
world-wide. The aridness and infertility characteristic of the soil
combine with the detritus of fashion and the follies of the four
quarters of the globe. The result is a child-like type, petulant, devoid
of virtue, and utterly destitute of a single manly quality. This is the
American type. America is _par excellence_ the continent of
stupidity.

The American has not yet outgrown the monkey in him and remains in the
imitative stage.

I have no particular reason to dislike Americans. My hostility towards
them arises merely from the fact that I have never known one who had the
air of being anybody, who impressed me as a man.

You frequently meet a man in the interior of Spain, in some small
village, perhaps, whose conversation conveys the impression that he is a
real man, wrought out of the ore that is most human and most noble. At
such times one becomes reconciled to one's country, for all its
charlatans and hordes of sharpers.

An American never appears to be calm, serene and collected. There are
plenty who seem to be wild, impulsive creatures, driven on by sanguinary
fury, while others disclose the vanity of the chorus girl, or a self-
conceit which is wholly ridiculous.

My lack of sympathy for Spanish-Americans extends to their literary
productions. Everything that I have read by South Americans, and I bear
in mind the not disinterested encomiums of Unamuno, I have found to be
both poor and deficient in substance.

Beginning with Sarmiento's _Facundo_, which is heavy, cheap, and
uninteresting, and coming down to the latest productions of Ingenieros,
Manuel Ugarte, Ricardo Rojas and Contreras, this is true without
exception.

What a deluge of shoddy snobbery and vulgar display pours out of
America!

It is often argued that Spaniards should eulogize South Americans for
political reasons. This is one of many recommendations which proceed
from the craniums of gentlemen who top themselves off with silk hats and
who carry a lecture inside which is in demand by Ibero-American
societies.

I have no faith that this brand of politics will be productive of
results.

Citizens of old, civilized countries are still sensible to flattery and
compliment, but what are you to tell an Argentine who is fully convinced
that Argentina is a more important country than England or Germany,
because she raises a large quantity of wheat, to say nothing of a great
number of cows?

Whenever Unamuno writes he decries Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and
then promptly eulogizes the mighty General Anibal Perez and the great
poet Diocleciano Sanchez, who hail from the pampas. To these fellows,
such praise seems grudging enough. Salvador Rueda himself must appear
tame to these hide-stretchers.

XVI

POLITICS

I have always been a liberal radical, an individualist and an anarchist.
In the first place, I am an enemy of the Church; in the second place, I
am an enemy of the State. When these great powers are in conflict I am a
partisan of the State as against the Church, but on the day of the
State's triumph, I shall become an enemy of the State. If I had lived
during the French Revolution, I should have been an internationalist of
the school of Anacarsis Clootz; during the struggle for liberty, I
should have been one of the _Carbonieri_.

To the extent in which liberalism has been a destructive force, inimical
to the past, it enthralls me. The fight against religious prejudice and
the aristocracy, the suppression of religious communities, inheritance
taxes--in short, whatever has a tendency to pulverize completely the
ancient order of society, fills me with a great joy. On the other hand,
insofar as liberalism is constructive, as it has been for example in its
advocacy of universal suffrage, in its democracy, and in its system of
parliamentary government, I consider it ridiculous and valueless as
well.

Even today, wherever it is obliged to take the aggressive, it seems to
me that the good in liberalism is not exhausted; but wherever it has
become an accomplished fact, and is accepted as such, it neither
interests me nor enlists my admiration.

VOTES AND APPLAUSE

In our present day democracy, there are only two effective sanctions:
votes and applause.

Those are all. Just as in the old days men committed all sorts of crimes
in order to please their sovereign, now they commit similar crimes in
order to satisfy the people.

And this truth has been recognized from Aristotle to Burke.

Democracy ends in histrionism.

A man who gets up to talk before a crowd must of necessity be an actor.
I have wondered from time to time if I might not have certain histrionic
gifts myself; however, when I have put them to the test, I have found
that they were not sufficient. I have made six or seven speeches during
my brief political career. I spoke in Valencia, in a pelota court, and I
delivered an address at Barcelona in the Casa del Pueblo, in both of
which places I was applauded generously. Nevertheless the applause
failed to intoxicate me; it produced no impression upon me whatever. It
seemed too much like mere noise--noise made by men's hands, and having
nothing to do with myself.

I am not good enough as an actor to be a politician.

POLITICIANS

I have never been able to feel any enthusiasm for Spanish politicians.
We hear a great deal about Canovas. Canovas has always impressed me as
being as bad an orator as he was a writer. When I first read his _Bell
of Huesca_, I could not contain myself for laughing. As far as his
speeches are concerned, I have also read a few, and find them horribly
heavy, diffuse, monotonous and deficient in style. I hear that Canovas
is a great historian, but if so, I am not acquainted with that side of
him.

Castelar was unquestionably a man of exceptional gifts as a writer, but
he failed to take advantage of them, and they were utterly dissipated.
He lacked what most Spaniards of the 19th Century lacked with him; that
is, reserve.

When Echegaray was made Minister of Finance, he was already an old man.
A reporter called one day to interview him at the Ministry, and
Echegaray confessed that he was without any very clear idea as to just
what the duties of his office were to be. When the reporter took leave
of the dramatist, he remarked:

"Don Jose, you are not going to be comfortable here; it is cold in the
building. Besides, the air is too fresh."

Echegaray replied:

"Yes, and your description suits me exactly."

This cynically cheap joke might have fallen appropriately from the
tongues of the majority of Spanish politicians. Among these male
_bailarinas_, nearly all of whom date back to the Revolution of
September, we may find, indeed, some men of austere character: Salmeron,
Pi y Margall and Costa. Salmeron was an inimitable actor, but an actor
who was sincere in his part. He was the most marvellous orator that I
have ever heard.

As a philosopher, he was of no account, and as a politician he was a
calamity.

Pi y Margall, whom I met once in his own home where I went in company
with Azorin, was no more a politician or a philosopher than was
Salmeron. He was a journalist, a popularizer of other men's ideas,
gifted with a style at once clear and concise. Pi y Margall was sincere,
enamoured of ideas, and took but little thought of himself.

As to Costa, I confess that he was always antipathetic to me. Like
Nakens, he was a man who lived upon the estimation in which he was held
by others, pretending all the while that he attached no importance to it
whatever. Aguirre Metaca once told me that while he was connected with a
paper in Saragossa, he had solicited an interview with Costa, and
thereupon Costa wrote the interview himself, referring to himself here
and there in it as the Lion of Graus. I cannot accept Costa as a modern
European, intellectually. He was a figure for the Cortes of Cadiz,
solemn, pompous, becollared and rhetorical. He was one of those actors
who abound in southern countries, who are laid to rest in their graves
without ever having had the least idea that their entire lives have been
nothing but stage spectacles.

REVOLUTIONISTS

Whether politicians or authors, the Spanish revolutionists always smack
to my mind of the property room, and especially is this true of the
authors. Zozaya, Morote and Dicenta have passed for many years now as
terrible men, both destructive and great innovators. But how ridiculous!
Zozaya, like Dicenta, has never done anything but manipulate the
commonplace, failing to impart either lightness or novelty to it, as
have Valera and Anatole France, succeeding only on the other hand in
making it more plumbeous and indigestible.

Speaking of Luis Morote, against whom I urge nothing as a man, he has
always been a bugbear to me, the personification of dullness, of
vulgarity, of everything that lacks interest and charm. I can conceive
nothing lower than an article by Morote.

"What talent that man has! What a revolutionary personality!" they used
to say in Valencia, and once the janitor at the Club added: "To think I
knew that man when he was only this high!" And he held out his hand
about a metre above the ground.

Spain has never produced any revolutionists. Don Nicolas Estevanez, who
imagined himself an anarchist, would fly into a rage if he read an
article which concealed a gallicism in it.

"Do not bother your head about gallicisms," I used to say to him. "What
do they matter, anyway?"

No, we have never had any revolutionists in Spain. That is, we have had
only one: Ferrer.

He was certainly not a man of great mind. When he talked, he was on the
level of Morote and Zozaya, which is nothing more nor less than the
level of everybody else; but when it came to action, he did amount to
something, and that something was dangerous.

LERROUX

My only experience in politics was gained with Lerroux.

One Sunday, seven or eight years ago, on coming out of my house and
crossing the Plaza de San Marcial, I observed that a great crowd had
gathered.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"Lerroux is coming," they told me.

I delayed a moment and happened on Villar, the composer, among the
crowd. We fell to talking of Lerroux and what he might accomplish. A
procession was soon formed, which we followed, and we found ourselves in
front of the editorial offices of _El Pais_.

"Shall we go in?" asked Villar. "Do you know Lerroux?"

I had met Lerroux in the days when _El Progreso_ was still
published, having called once with Maeztu at his office; afterwards I
saw him in Barcelona in a large shed, which, if I recall rightly, went
by the name of "La Fraternidad Republicana," and then I was accompanied
by Azorin and Junoy.

Villar and I went upstairs and greeted Lerroux in the offices of _El
Pais_.

"Estevanez has spoken of you to me," he said. "Is he well?"

"Yes, very well."

A few days later, Lerroux invited me to dinner at the Cafe Ingles.
Lerroux, Fuente and I dined together, and then fell to talking. Lerroux
asked me to join his party, whereupon I pointed out the qualifications
which were lacking in me, which were necessary to a politician. Shortly
after, I was nominated as a candidate for the City Council, and I
addressed a number of meetings, although always coldly, and never at
high tension.

While I was with Lerroux, I was never treated save with consideration.

Why did I leave his party? Chiefly because of differences as to ideas
and as to tactics. Lerroux wished to organize his party into a party of
law and order, so that it might be capable of governing, and also to
have it friendly with the Army. I was of the opinion that it ought to be
a revolutionary party, not in the sense that I was thinking of erecting
barricades, but I wished it to contest, to upset things, and to protest
against injustice.

What Lerroux wanted was a party of orators who could speak at public
meetings, a party of office-holders, councillors, provincial deputies
and the like, while I held, and still hold, that the only efficacious
revolutionary weapon is the printed page. Lerroux was anxious to
transform the radical party into something aristocratic and Castilian; I
desired to see it retain its Catalan character, and continue to wear
blouses and rope-soled shoes.

I withdrew from the party for these reasons, to which I may add
Lerroux's attitude of indifference upon the occasion of the execution of
the stoker of the "Numancia."

Not many months after, I met him on the Carrera de San Jeronimo, and he
said to me:

"I have read your diatribes."

"They were not directed against you, but against your politics. I shall
never speak ill of you, because I have no cause."

"Yes," he replied, "I know that at heart you are one of my friends."

AN OFFER

A number of years ago, when the Conservatives were in power and Dato was
President of the Ministry, Azorin brought me word that Sanchez Guerra,
then Minister of the Interior, wished to see me and to have a little
talk, as perhaps some way might be arranged by which I might be made
deputy. During the afternoon, I accompanied Azorin to the Ministry, and
we saw the Minister.

He informed me that he would like to have me enter the Congress.

"I should like to myself," I replied, "but it would appear to me rather
difficult."

"But is there not some town where you are well known, and where you have
influence?"

"No, none whatever."

"How would you like then to be deputy to represent the Government?"

"As a regular?"

"Yes."

"As a Conservative?"

"Yes."

I thought a moment and said: "No, I can never be a Conservative, however
it might suit my interest to be so. Try as hard as I might, I should
never succeed."

"That is the only way in which we can make you deputy."

"Well, it cannot be helped! I must resign myself then to amount to
nothing."

Thanking the Minister for his kindness. Azorin and I walked out of the
Ministry of the Interior.

SOCIALISTS

As for Socialists, I have never cared to have anything to do with them.
One of the most offensive things about Socialists, which is more
offensive than their pedantry, than their charlatanry, than their
hypocrisy, is their inquisitorial instinct for prying into other
people's lives. Whether Pablo Iglesias travels first or third class, has
been for years one of the principal topics of dispute between Socialists
and their opponents.

Fifteen years ago I was in Tangier, where I had been sent by the
_Globo_, and, upon my return, a newspaper man who had socialistic
ideas, reproached me:

"You talk a great deal about the working man, but I see you were living
in the best hotel in Tangier."

I answered: "In the first place, I have never spoken of the workingman
with any fervour. Furthermore, I am not such a slave as to be too
cowardly to take what life offers as it comes, as you are. I take what I
can that I want, and when I do not take it, it is because I cannot get
it."

LOVE OF THE WORKINGMAN

To gush over the workingman is one of the commonplaces of the day which
is utterly false and hypocritical. Just as in the 18th century sympathy
was with the simple hearted citizen, so today we talk about the
workingman. The term workingman can never be anything but a grammatical
common denominator. Among workingmen, as among the bourgeoisie, there
are all sorts of people. It is perfectly true that there are certain
characteristics, certain defects, which may be exaggerated in a given
class, because of its special environment and culture. The difference in
Spanish cities between the labouring man and the bourgeoisie is not very
great. We frequently see the workingman leap the barrier into the
bourgeoisie, and then disclose himself as a unique flower of knavery,
extortion and misdirected ingenuity. Deep down in the hearts of our
revolutionists, I do not believe that there is any real enthusiasm for
the workingman.

When the bookshop of Fernando Fe was still fin the Carrera de San
Jeronimo, I once heard Blasco Ibanez say with the cheapness that is his
distinguishing trait, laughing meanwhile ostentatiously, that a republic
in Spain would mean the rule of shoemakers and of the scum of the
streets.

THE CONVENTIONALIST BARRIOVERO

Barriovero, a conventionalist, according to Grandmontagne--yes, and how
keen the scent of this American for such matters!--attended the opening
of a radical club in the Calle del Principe with a party of friends. We
were all drinking champagne. Like other revolutionists and parvenus
generally, Lerroux is a victim of the superstition of champagne.

"Aha, suppose those workingmen should see us drinking champagne!"
suggested some one.

"What of it?" asked another.

"I only wish for my part," Barriovero interrupted with a show of
sentiment, "that the workingman could learn to drink champagne."

"Learn to drink it?" I burst out, "I see no difficulty about that. He
could drink champagne as well as anything else."

"Not at all," said Barriovero the conventionalist, very gravely. "He has
the superstition of the peasant; he thinks he must leave enough wine to
cover the bottom of the glass."

I doubt whether this observation will attract the attention of any
future Plutarch, although it might very well do so, as it expresses most
I clearly the distinction which exists in the minds of our
revolutionists between the workingman and the young gentleman.

ANARCHISTS

I have had a number of acquaintances among anarchists. Some of them are
dead; the majority of the others have changed their ideas. It is
apparent nowadays that the anarchism of Reclus and Kropotkin is out of
date, and entirely a thing of the past. The same tendencies will
reappear under other forms, and present new aspects. Among anarchists, I
have known Elysee Reclus, whom I met in the editorial offices of a
publication called _L'Humanite Nouvelle_, which was issued in Paris
in the Rue des Saints-Peres. I have also met Sebastien Faure during a
mass meeting organized in the interests of one Guerin, who had taken
refuge in a house in the Rue de Chabrol some eighteen or twenty years
ago. I have had relations with Malatesta and Tarrida del Marmol. As a
matter of fact, both these anarchists escorted me one afternoon from
Islington, where Malatesta lived, to the door of the St. James Club, one
of the most aristocratic retreats in London, where I had an appointment
to meet a diplomat.

As for active anarchists, I have known a number, two or three of whom
have been dynamiters.

THE MORALITY OF THE ALTERNATING PARTY SYSTEM

The only difference between the morality of the Liberal party and that
of the Conservative party is one of clothes. Among Conservatives the
most primitive clout seems to be slightly more ample, but not noticeably
so.

The preoccupations of both are purely with matters of style. The only
distinction is that the Conservatives make off with a great deal at
once, while the Liberals take less, but do it often.

This is in harmony with the law of mechanics according to which what is
gained in force is lost in velocity and what is gained in intensity is
lost in expansion. After all, no doubt morality in politics should be a
negligible quantity. Honest, upright men who hearken only to the voice
of conscience, never get on in politics, neither are they ever
practical, nor good for anything.

To succeed in politics, a certain facility is necessary, to which must
be added ambition and a thirst for glory. The last is the most innocent
of the three.

ON OBEYING THE LAW

It is safe, it seems to me, to assume the following axioms: First, to
obey the law is in no sense to attain justice; second, it is not
possible to obey the law strictly, thoroughly, in any country in the
world.

That obeying the law has nothing to do with justice is indisputable, and
this is especially true in the political sphere, in which it is easy to
point to a rebel, such as Martinez Campos, who has been elevated to the
plane of a great man and who has been immortalized by a statue upon his
death, and then to a rebel such as Sanchez Moya, who Was merely shot.
The only difference between the men was in the results attained, and in
the manner of their exit.

Hence I say that Lerroux was not only base, but obtuse and absurdly
wanting in human feeling and revolutionary sympathy, when he concurred
in the execution of the stoker of the "Numancia."

If law and justice are identical and to comply with the law is
invariably to do justice, then what can be the distinction between the
progressive and the conservative? On the other hand, the revolutionist
has no alternative but to hold that law and justice are not the same,
and so he is obliged to subscribe to the benevolent character of all
crimes which are altruistic and social in their purposes, whether they
are reactionary or anarchistic in tendency.

Now the second axiom, which is to the effect that there is no city or
country in the world in which it is possible to obey the law thoroughly,
is also self-evident. A certain class of common crimes, such as robbery,
cheating and swindling, murder and the like, are followed by a species
of automatic punishment in all quarters of the civilized world, in spite
of exceptions in specific cases, which result from the intervention of
political bosses and similar influences; but there are other offenses
which meet with no such automatic punishment. In these pardon and
penalty are meted out in a spirit of pure opportunism.

I was discussing Zurdo Olivares one day with Emiliano Iglesias in the
office of _El Radical_, when I asked him:

"How was it that Zurdo Olivares could save himself after playing such an
active role in the tragic week at Barcelona?"

"Zurdo's salvation was indirectly owing to me," replied Iglesias.

"But, my dear sir!"

"Yes, indeed."

"How did that happen?"

"Very naturally. There were three cases to be tried; one was against
Ferrer, one against Zurdo, and another against me. A friend who enjoyed
the necessary influence, succeeded in quashing the case against me, as a
matter of personal favour, and as it seemed rather barefaced to make an
exception alone in my favour, it was decided to include Zurdo Olivares,
who, thanks to the arrangement, escaped being shot."

"Then, if an influential friend of yours had not been a member of the
Ministry, you would both have been shot in the moat at Montjuich?"

"Beyond question."

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